Once upon a time, back before any of my students were born (before they were
even gleams in their parents eyes), I was also a student.

I was a pretty good student if I do say so myself, and came out #2 in both my
Junior High (9th grade) and High School .graduating classes.

As a result I gave the Salutatory address at the graduations. I thought these
speeches were lost to history (not necessarily a bad fate), when I decided to
take advantage of the break Hurricane Wilma gave school teachers to go through
some old boxes of files. There among spiders and mildew I found copies of both
speeches. I have scanned them in to the computer, complete with grammatical and
spelling errors and am posting them here.

This is not an exercise in vanity. It has a point. Historically, looking back
30+ years the problems in the Sudan have barely changed. It may be of some
interest to my students to see what was on the mind of one of their teachers
"back in the day." It also illustrates what was expected of a speech "back
in the day." As I read papers by my current 9th graders I see very few that are
as well written (forget for a moment content) as the speech from 1971, and
regardless of grade level few as well constructed as the one from 1974. I also
find that the main point in the 1974 speech is still valid, perhaps even more so
in light of the Patriot Act and the imposition of "family values" by the
religious right.

June 1971

Mr. Rosovsky,
honored guests, parents, faculty and fellow graduates.

On behalf of the
graduating class I would like to welcome all of you to the commencement
exercises of the 1971 class of Daniel Carter Beard Junior High School.

We can compare
our world to a piece of marble waiting to be shaped by the sculptor. Soon, we
will take from our parents the most powerful hammer and chisel the world has
ever known and shape our marble, the world. If we are callous with life and
death, the world will shatter. We must care for all people, not just our
friends, but all people, all over the world. We must not be selective in our
brotherhood. The world is callous. For example, in the Sudan a civil race war
rages that few have even heard of. The Moslem north against the Black animist
and Christian south. In the Sudan approximately one million have already dies in
the South. Where is the outcry? The relief? The Aid?

In the past there
were rallies, protest and rebellion, for people and against war and fear. Now,
this year, people are relaxing their vigil against injustice and evil. We must
not give up our rebellion against war, fear, prejudice and hate. For we are the
vanguard of a new era. It is for us to decide whether man will live in “Soulless
Cities” or “Living Communities.”

All this depends
on our actions today and tomorrow. Already we the youth of America are taking
part in the complexities of the world.

If a man should
ask for your help, “Which way to the post office?” you would tell him, you would
help him. Today the world is reaching out asking for help. We must answer its
call. We must involve ourselves. Apathy must become a thing of the past. We
are, because of circumstance and chance, the generation that gives the world
hope. For we come at a time when conventions are relaxing and society is
changing.

We must supply
new conventions and a new society to replace the dispassionate, callous and
collapsing standards of many. The foundation is all that is left of their
brilliant sand castle. On this foundation we must build a society based not on
greed and might, whether financial or physical, but on trust, peace and
practical, not preached, brotherhood.

The future we
will live in is one of immense possibilities. Imagine, if you will, a world of
few if any muggings or murders, where all three year olds know the alphabet, and
start school on an equal footing, of zero unemployment, zero poverty, zero
inflation and no traffic jams. All this is possible through technology.

Poverty, hunger
could be things of the past in a world of advanced machines. The oceans will be
harvested, the sun’s radiation may even be directly used.

The technology to
achieve these modern miracles is already here. In Germany a train able to go
350 miles per hour is planned for 1980. In Japan processed seaweed is already
sold as a food supplement, like rice or wheat. The microwave oven can cook a
hambuger in seconds, not minutes. The four day work week already exists in some
of this countrys’ businesses.

The future which
technology promises us is a rich one, but it is laden with riddles and problems.
Can society, as it is now, adapt to technology. We already have a gap, between
what man can do and what man must do. Society must change and adapt as
technology advances.

Our morals must
change or man will die out as a species. For example, man has used war to
settle conflict for 2000 years. This is not practical in today’s world of
overkill and second strike capabilities. Racial discrimination was practical,
though evil, in yesterday’s world of competition for jobs and food. This too,
will be impractical and un-necessary in tomorrow’s world. We must change
society to a more humane level, for otherwise the total culture of life, as we
know it, is doomed.

The new society
we build, the new structure of life must be based on truth and life, not lies
and death. Man is given this one last chance, we must not waste it.

Every generation,
till now, has repaired and patched the leaking boat of civilization. Shouldn’t
our generation with American power and wealth in our hands build a new Noah’s
Ark for all mankind.

Mark Gottfried

Salutatorian
Speech-January 1974

On behalf of my
friends and fellow graduates, I would like to welcome Mr. Serisky, Mr. Mudd, our
honored guests, the faculty and our parents to these commencement exercises of
the Francis Lewis High School class of January 1974.

I had just
finished a rather complicated speech on individuality when I saw the movie of
Orwell’s classic, 1984. On that screen I saw the things my speech for this
morning was warning against, coming true. The characters were giving up their
right to think for themselves. It scared me, because in 1984 I’ll be 27 and a
world where people believe what they’re told, is my private image of hell.

Today we already
find people surrendering their right to think, for the right to belong. We
already seem to follow along with the crowd. We give up our own goals for those
of a group that does our thinking and hoping for us. We cease to be individuals,
but act and react as groups.

As High School
graduates we will hear time and time again that as a group we are the world’s
future and hope. Yet most of us see the world as something we can not
individually affect. Our vision is of a society we must conform to, rather than
change.

The horror of
1984 could be the final result not of nuclear catastrophe as in Orwell’s novel,
but of our personal neglect of our individuality.

Our neglect for
our own thoughts is ironically a result of our search for our own identities. In
seeking our identities we tend to abandon our minds to those who will do our
thinking for us. We join groups to hide from the inner conflict that begins
when we try to find a road to self determination. It is much easier to follow
trends than to follow oneself. Many of my friends are going through what we now
label as identity crisis. I am also a victim of this terribly contagious
disease. However, I find the result of all of our soul searching to be not a
personal conviction, but the selection of a new style to follow. Even the
searching for an identity has become a fashion of its own. Who are the leaders
of the fashions we follow? I suspect that those whose ideals we claim as our
own are as lacking in individual thought as we are. Together we search for a
group identity. We are afraid of personal value judgments, of affirming a
conviction different from that of our chosen peers. As individuals we lose in
this abdication of personal conviction. The question becomes, not Who are you?;
and what do you believe in?; but, who do you agree with? And whose ideas do you
accept?

Only a few years
ago when my sister graduated from Francis Lewis the idealism of her class
committed them to movements and marches in every possible cause. Today, having
seen the imperfect world change only superficially in response to their long
decades of demonstration, we have turned to the more practical philosophy of
changing our own lives and influencing the world around us.

The society we
will create will be the sum of our personal worlds. If we each become the
guardian of our own freedom of thought, and guard our judgment from those who
would mold public opinion and from our own laxness. If each time a new idea is
proposed we think out our own opinion without wondering about what others will
think, then the world of 1984 will not be one of fear.

We are the
generation of 1984. We will be the generation that decides the use of technology
and media either as the controls of our minds or merely as tools to enhance our
personal freedom of choice. This personal dignity and independence of thought
is the hope that our tomorrows will not be lived in Orwell’s 1984, but in a
world of individual liberties.

Perhaps in 1984
we will return to Francis Lewis having each maintained an individuality that a
Big Brother can not destroy.